Lok Sabha polls: Constitution, quota at centre stage, Phase 3 campaign for 93 seats ends

In the final hours of campaigning on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP stepped up the attack on the Congress and its INDIA bloc allies, while the Opposition leaders hit back in equal measure.

Modi, who offered prayers at the Ram temple in Ayodhya and held a roadshow, addressed rallies in Uttar Pradesh where he lashed out at the “dynastic politics” of the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, saying that while their leaders work to benefit only their own families, he was building a better future for the coming generations.

Referring to himself and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, he said: “We don’t have children. We are working for your children.”

PM Narendra Modi at Ram temple in Ayodhya on Sunday. (PTI)

Modi also reiterated his charge that the Congress wanted to carve out a quota for its “Muslim vote bank”. “They (Congress) now want to do across the country what they did in Karnataka. They want to rob the reservation of SC/ST and OBC on the basis of religion,” he said.

PTI adds: In Telangana, addressing a rally at Nirmal under Adilabad Lok Sabha constituency, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi reiterated his charge that Modi was against reservation. “Narendra Modiji is against reservation. He wants to take away reservation from you. The biggest issue before the country is increasing reservation from 50 per cent,” he said.

Rahul claimed that the ongoing general elections was between two ideologies in which the Congress was trying to safeguard the Constitution, while the BJP-RSS combine wanted to end it and people’s rights. He said the BJP leaders have said that if their party wins the elections, they will change and finish the Constitution. “If the Constitution is finished, reservation will end,” he said, adding that the BJP wants backward classes, Dalits and Adivasis to remain backward.

Rahul claimed that the ongoing general elections was between two ideologies in which the Congress was trying to safeguard the Constitution

The reservation issue dominated the campaign discourse in the run-up to the third phase, as the NDA and INDIA bloc levelled charges and counter-charges. The Opposition continued its pitch that the BJP wanted to win more than 400 seats so that it could make changes in the Constitution and snatch away the reservation benefits of SCs, STs and OBCs. Modi countered with the argument that the Congress, if voted to power, would divert the SC, ST and OBC quota to its “Muslim vote bank”.

The stakes are significant for the BJP and its allies, which had, in 2019, won 75 of the 93 seats going to polls on Tuesday, while the INDIA bloc parties had won only 11. Four seats had gone to the undivided Shiv Sena, two were won by independents, and one by the AIUDF.

The BJP also pounced on Sam Pitroda’s comment that the US inheritance tax was an interesting idea, alleging that the Congress would redistribute property to its “vote bank”. The Congress, on its part, continued to promise a caste census and an ‘X-ray’ of resources to deliver justice to Dalits, Adivasis and OBCs.

A BJP supporter in Ranchi with a PM Narendra Modi cutout. (ANI)

By Tuesday evening, over 280 constituencies will have gone to polls, meaning that more than half of the total seats in Lok Sabha will have been decided. All the remaining 25 seats (barring Surat) in Gujarat will vote in a single phase on Tuesday, alongside the remaining seven seats in Chhattisgarh and 14 in Karnataka. This will mark the end of polling in these states. Polling has also ended in Rajasthan, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Among the other constituencies voting in the third phase are four in Assam, five in Bihar, seven in Chhattisgarh, eight in Madhya Pradesh, 11 in Maharashtra, 10 in Uttar Pradesh and four in West Bengal.

Some of the key seats are: Gandhinagar, where Home Minister Amit Shah is contesting; Baramati, where Sharad Pawar’s daughter Supriya Sule is taking on his nephew Ajit Pawar’s wife Sunetra Pawar; Vidisha, where the BJP has fielded former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan; Guna (Jyotiraditya Scindia), Dharwad (Pralhad Joshi), Haveri (Basavraj Bommai) and Dhubri (Badruddin Ajmal).

In Karnataka, where the Prajwal Revanna sex assault case took centrestage over the last few days, the BJP had bagged all the 14 seats voting on Tuesday. With the JD(S) being an ally of the BJP, Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, targeted Modi and his party over the case.

The third phase comes amid speculation about what the dip in voter turnout in the first two phases signifies. The 102 seats that voted in the first phase recorded 66.14% polling, down from roughly 70% turnout in 2019. The turnout in the 88 seats in the second phase was 66.71%. In 2019, 83 of these 88 seats — five seats in Assam went through delimitation and have, therefore, not been factored in the comparison — saw 69.64% voting.